The Mouth on Charming Hill
by Memphis Lupine
Summary: [Movieverse; pre-movie] When the BPRD responds to a string of paranormal events in a small Virginian town, Hellboy and Liz might be in for more than they expected. [05-05-04: Chapter four uploaded.]
1. Prologue

_I'm trying to get everything I want to say about this fic out of the way before I actually start the fic; I don't want to post lengthy and needless notes with every chapter when I can just get it all done with right off the bat.  Erego, the notes will be rather lengthy at the beginning of this chapter, but you won't have to see them again for a while._

**Note:** This being a movieverse fic, I will only be archiving it in the Comics—Miscellaneous Superheroes section until a Hellboy category is opened in the Movies area.  I apologize if this is an inconvenience to anyone.

**Series/Continuity:** Hellboy, movieverse.  Specifically, this is set four years before the actual movie (holding that the movie's events happen in late 2004); Liz, if you use the age given in the novelization (twenty-six when the movie begins and ends), is twenty-two during this fic and only recently an official BPRD agent.  A few minor details may be incorporated from the novelization of the movie, and there will be a few references to the comics.

**Feedback:** Trust me, I'd be very appreciative for anything you could offer.  Constructive criticism, honest praise, whatever – I'll love ya for it.  I won't be responding to reviews until the last chapter, but believe me when I say every single review will be read and appreciated until I get to that point.  Huge thanks beforehand.

**Blanket Disclaimer:** Hellboy, Liz, Broom, Abe, Manning, and all other characters from the Hellboy universe (movie and comics alike) are the property of Mike Mignola; the screenplay and relationships worked off of in the story are developed by Guillermo del Toro (with, of course, Mike Mignola).  Original characters and this fic are spawned from my own dubious creativity, so let's hope and see if everything turns out all right.

**Various:** Hellboy/Liz undercurrents (movieverse fic, after all), several original characters of little to major role, no Myers (due to timeframe), an eventual PG13 rating, and cigars.  Whoo?

--

--

The Mouth on Charming Hill: 

Prologue

--

_Early July, 2000._

_Hallisburg__, __VA.___

        Like all nights of great, if unusual, importance in this particular tired town, it began with a low whistling wind and rapidly piling storm clouds; the sky had been promising rain for the past few days, overcast and still dry.  The weatherman had preached from his invisible pulpit about the coming storm and the omnipresent threat of a flash flood.  Those few in the valley-town who bothered to peek at The Weather Channel took note of the warning, and then shrugged, too worn or uncaring to genuinely give a damn.  Disaster was nothing new, and a flood of any sort was a welcomed relief after the drought of late.

        The ground was split into patches of hardened dirt, the grass yellow and brittle; summer heat and a relentless lack of moisture had frayed relations and sharpened tempers.  Now, with the distinct, clear scent of a coming rain in the air and the sidelong feel of static electricity, the thought of rain was a cheering one.

        A small girl bounced on her toes in the small, aged bookshop on the corner of Charming Drive and Eastwind Street.  As she looked, curious, through the glass, she tried to see clearly through the layer of dirt on the outside and the chipped lettering that read A CHARMING READ.  She pressed her small hands to the glass, nose firmly set against the window.

        "Is it raining yet?" she asked.

        "Hm?" the shop-owner replied.  The young man glanced from his chore of re-shelving abandoned books to the same display window she stood eagerly at.  "No, Jeanie," he began, "it's not raining yet.  Give it a few minutes and it'll be pouring, though."

        He nodded his head toward the small, blue dial-radio on the counter.  A weather report was wrapping up, the tinny chiming fade-out replaced quickly by Gladys Knight and the Pips.  Though she frowned, the girl returned to the window, humming off-key to the music.

        "How do I know?" Jeanie asked again, tilting her tiny head back to study him quizzically.

        "Know what?" he responded absently.  He slid a book into place, smiling at his minor accomplishment, just before a brilliant streak of lightning cut the sky and lit the silhouetted manor atop Charming Hill.

        Jeanie shrieked, terrified and delighted.  Thunder followed quickly, deep and rumbling as it vibrated in their chests; the girl clapped a hand to her flat chest with glee.

        "Now it's raining," he said, grinning; a fierce, slanted beat rushed against the roof as the lights flickered, once, and then steadied as the rain drummed harder.  "Hope the lights stay," he added, and Jeanie appeared suddenly worried.

        "They can't go out," she protested, nervous.

        _"Darkness all around me,"_ sang Gladys, and with a string of sharp pops the lights exploded.

        Jeanie screamed again, no longer delighted as the bookshop was effectively blackened.

        "Crud," the man bit out, dropping a book with a startled thud.  "Jeanie, are you okay?  Don't worry about the lights; it'll probably only be a few minutes until I can find some more bulbs, and--"

        _"But I just don't feel like talking to anyone,"_ crooned the radio.

        His voice cut off and Jeanie, whimpering, found she could not.

        The rain fell even harder, thrumming and rushing around the shop; half-sobbing, but still terribly silent, the girl turned to star wildly at the rain as it blurred and misted the world outside.  Even that, though, was off-kilter.  The drops, of course, fell to the ground and to roofs, on the uncovered head of a single man running down the sidewalk with a harried expression on his face.

        But instead of racing down the moderately slanted Eastwind Street, the fallen rainwater was steadily flowing up the steep incline of Charming Hill.

--


	2. Chapter One

The Mouth on Charming Hill:

Chapter One

--

_Mid-July, 2000._

_Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense_

_Newark__, __NJ__._

It was the same room it had always been, plain and white, with a few pictures held to the wall by a frame of thumbtacks she had managed to force in.  They were normal photographs – at least chemically – from an old and rather beat-up Polaroid she'd been meaning to replace; the Polaroid itself, with its independence from a dark room, was needed because of the far from normal nature of the actual images.  One, of an elderly, well-groomed gentleman who could have passed for her grandfather, was normal enough.  Beside it, though, were two other, distinctly abnormal photos: one for each of the other two members in her awkward and strange surrogate family.

        Now, with her clammy palms pressed nervously to the layered cotton of her black slacks, Liz carefully peeled one of those two from the wall.  The solemn face of Abe Sapien was framed by the curling white edges of the Polaroid.  For a moment she only stood there, in the bareness of her room, focusing on her friend's green face as if to will his implacable calm into her limbs.

        They were like good luck charms, in a way, the photographs: looking to Broom's for the ability to know and understand; Abe's for his calm and insight; H.B.'s, she thought as she looked at the surly (but relatively relaxed) face of the last picture, for courage and what?

        "Bad temper?" she murmured to her empty room.  She bit her lower lip to keep the private smile down.  Leaning forward, she tucked Abe's photo back into its regular place. 

        Liz rubbed her palms together, then hurriedly along her pant's leg in an anxious gesture.  "Guess I'll have to keep it together on my own, huh, Abe?" she asked the picture; she knew she couldn't really capture the calm in the photograph.  There probably _were_ others who could do that sort of thing, but she was not one of them.

        You've done enough on your own anyway, she thought before flinching.

        She stood, motionless, for another moment before impulsively picking all three pictures from the wall.  Tapping the edges lightly against her wrist, she hesitated, and then tucked the three into the inner pocket of her uniformly black jacket.  She rested her hand over the pocket, trying to gather her nerves together under her usual cool, fidgety exterior.

        When a light, playful knock came at the door, Liz nearly screamed at the sudden noise.  As it was, she jumped slightly and fisted her hand in the jacket as her throat tightened.  Two quick knocks, as light as the first, and the door swung open at the hands of a wetsuit-clad "fish" man.

        "Jesus, Abe," she sighed, relaxing her fisted hand.  "I think you might've scared me half to death."  Patting her jacket absently, she lifted her hand and ran it nervously through her black hair.

        "Oh," he blinked.  A pale film covered his bright, almond-shaped eyes, and slid back down, clearing his gaze again.  "Then I apologize, Liz – I hadn't meant to frighten you."

        She waved her hand in aimless dismissal, tilting her head so her dark hair half-obscured her face.  "Nah, it's okay.  I've just been a little edgy today, is all.  It's sort of – strange-feeling right now."

        Abe nodded in that poised way of his.  "Being back, you mean?" he suggested politely.  "Or the fact that you've stayed for an entire run of five months as of tomorrow?"

        She shot him a sharp look.

        He sighed in return, a string of bubbles burbling in the glass chambers of his sustaining collar.  "There, see," he said almost ruefully, more sadly.  "I went and said it without thinking at all.  Liz," he hesitated, "you know I did not mean it to be an accusation.  I merely meant – well, I do know, somewhat, what you're feeling."

        It was Liz who sighed now, reaching a hand up to toy habitually with the gold crucifix at her throat.  "Abe," she started.  "I don't plan on leaving again.  I mean, I promised the professor I'd be staying."  She tried to smile reassuringly, failed to do so.  "It'd be too much hassle trying to get away from here with a badge and that guilt on my shoulders."

        "Liz," said Abe gently, tilting his sleek head to the side.  "Tomorrow you will have stayed here, with us, for five months straight.  That will have been the longest amount of time since you turned twenty and decided three years here had been long enough."  His voice was still gentle, soft enough to take the sting from the words; he blinked again, that pale film sliding up and receding.  "I won't ask why you are not happy staying, but I would ask that you explain to the Professor if you should leave again."

        She heard him and knew what he meant was not if, but _when_.  She smiled anyway, tiredly, as she cupped her thin hands together.  "I will," she promised.  "I mean, I can't just keep running out on him and expect him to welcome me back, emotional baggage and all."  Her smile turned sad and a little empty.

        "Prodigal son," Abe murmured sagely, before blinking thoughtfully.  "Or, rather, the prodigal daughter.  You know," he changed tacks a bit, in the smooth way that was his alone, "you're a bit like Hellboy in that sense.  Neither of you are particularly easy to keep in place."

        Liz wrinkled her eyebrows and laughed, once.  "H.B.?" she asked, still grinning slightly.  "I don't know about that.  He likes those cats of his too much to leave."  She touched a hand absently to her jacket, over the inner pocket; she could picture the image of the big red guy in her mind, slouched on the couch in his room with an oversized bowl of ice cream and two pleased tabbies tucked in his strong arms.

        "No," she repeated.  "He's really not the wandering type."

        "How odd," Abe replied.  "I've always thought the two of you were looking for something.  Perhaps I haven't been paying enough attention.

        "I came to wish you luck and fortitude on this next field job of yours," he shifted conversation again, before she could respond.

        She chose to ignore his earlier comment, and offered instead another small smile.  "Second in command on this case," she announced, with just an underlying note of wryness.  "Not that that means much.  H.B. and I'll be checking into some weird events in a small town down south, with Agent Sand.  Professor Broom said some CIA guy named Markham has family there; he's the one who called in about it."

        "Hm.  And where is this town, exactly?"  Abe grazed a finger over the bubbling collar about his neck.

        "Hallisburg, Virginia," Liz answered, and glanced at the watch on her wrist.

        Abe caught her shoulder as she moved to leave, late for the final check.  The aquatic man looked solemnly into her eyes, the limited musculature in his face twitching into a small smile – a broad grin by Abe's standards.  "Do keep in touch while you're gone," he said softly.  "You and the red monkey both."

        Liz smiled slightly one last time, resting a hand on his over her shoulder.

        "Don't worry," she told him.  "I'll take care of him."

-

        "Son of a _bitch_," Hellboy grunted, heaving the largest, and last, of the crates into the back of the brightly decorated milk truck.  As the crate thudded and slid a few inches, he flexed his left arm.  "Crap," he muttered when a sore muscle twinged near his shoulder.  "Crab-boy must've gotten a better shot than I thought."  

        There was a pointed satisfaction in the recent memory of having unceremoniously beaten that particular murderous beast into a pulp.

        With one last critical glance at the contents of the milk truck – soon to include himself – he grasped the handle of the back hatch in his stony right hand and casually picked a cigar from his pocket with his left.  The hatch came down, the cigar was effortlessly tucked between his lips, and entirely pleased with himself, he turned about, ready to swagger away from the truck.

        "Hellboy," said Father resignedly, and he almost choked on the cigar.  Professor Trevor Bruttenholm – Father, Professor, and residential Lawmaker – stood perhaps two feet away, his face shadowed with just the slightest hint of disapproval.  "If you don't plan on setting off the fire alarm at this moment, I'd like to see you in my study."

        It was the perfect blend of subtle parental warning and polite distance, and Hellboy was deeply reminded of a childhood incident involving a bucket of ice cream and Father's shoes.  This memory wasn't half as satisfying as the earlier one and as Father slowly made his way off, the far larger man shifted his weight guiltily.  Pocketing the unlit cigar, he made a mental note to pay more attention to whether or not Father was near at inopportune moments and followed.

        The walk to the study, and Abe's room, was done in silence, the professor apparently mulling over what it was he needed to say; his massive red son's silence was equal parts stubborn pride and guilt, courtesy of the professor's own lack of words.  Fortunately for Hellboy, who was on the verge of muttering a sullen rebuttal or a mumbled apology, the walk was not a long one.

        "Now?" came a familiar voice through the door, female and muffled, though still recognizable.

        Hellboy straightened his back and attempted to look less like a belligerent child (as Father might say).

        "Yes, if you wouldn't mind," was Abe's reply, projected from the speakers and clearer when Broom pushed the door open gently.

        In the polished, lamp-lit study, Liz was turning the pages of each of the four books on their wooden stands.  She glanced up briefly to smile at them, and carefully turned a fragile page in the fourth book, a gilded antique novel with age-brittle pages.  The young woman took a moment to smooth the page out, and stepped out of the way so Abe could see.

        "Hey," she greeted, folding her arms in a familiar protective gesture.  The lamps gave a faint gold tint to her dark hair, and it was strange seeing her dressed in the uniform black suit worn by the other BPRD agents – almost as if she were dressing up for Halloween.  As she crossed the floor to stand beside Hellboy, he felt awkward in his overcoat for a second or two, before pushing that aside.

        "Hey," he replied, and Father made a noise in his throat.  "What?"  After a moment, he thought to add a softer, "Sir?"

        Father gave him what very well could have been a look of wry sarcasm, was more likely just exasperation.  "Honestly," the elderly man chided.  "I would have expected politer greetings between you two."

        Damn – there went that irrational guilty feeling again.

        "Sorry, sir," Hellboy muttered, contrite.  Liz elbowed him lightly in the side to no avail.

        Now the expression was one of amusement, but Father chose not to say anything.  He did smile pointedly, though, and stepped quickly to his desk, flipping and sifting through the stacked papers on the surface.  "Where on Earth did I -- ah, here we go."  Smiling, pleased, he drew out two hefty envelopes and carefully placed the left on top of the right.  "Now, these really aren't mean to be opened until you've left," he began, and then stopped to look at the two – the one brusque and intimidating, the other small and forlorn.

        Oh Lord, Broom thought; how he worried about them.

        "Take these," he said instead of voicing his concern.  "Agent Sand is waiting outside for you both, near the gate."  

        There was nothing more to say, really, and so he continued to smile, shooing them away with his empty hand.

        "Good-bye," said Abe in agreement, and he twirled once in the water before sweeping out of sight.

        Liz opened her hand, gave a weak wave, and self-consciously curled her fingers back to her palm.

        "C'mon," Hellboy grinned, breaking the somber air.  He fingered the cigar he pulled from his pocket again, casually stated, "Let's get going already.  I'm getting bored just standing 'round here."  It was his way of reassuring Father, whether it worked or not; taking both of the envelopes, he stuck the cigar between his teeth again.

        A little rebellion never hurt.

-

Unnamed back-road. 

_Northern VA.___

        The truck jolted over another pothole and Hellboy grimaced.  The back of the truck, he reflected, must have shrunk sometime after he entered it – he could have sworn it was far from being as tight a fit as it was now.  Now, he thought grimly, he'd be lucky if Sand's driving and this road didn't knock his head clear off his neck.  Bracing one large booted foot on the edge of a crated, he closed his golden eyes and did his best to ignore the headache all this slamming around was building in his already sore head.

        "Think happy thoughts, damn it," he growled at the crate.  Sand hit another pothole in a display of excellent ironic timing, and he clenched his jaw to keep from grinding his teeth at the ensuing jolt of his head against the side of the truck.

        "Hey!" shouted Agent Sand from the driver's seat in an obnoxiously cheerful voice.  "You doin' okay back there, big fella?"

        He tilted his chin up, rolling his eyes skywards.  "Time of my life," he drawled.

        Liz twisted around in her seat, facing him through the lowered partition in the wall cutting the front seats from the cargo space.  She smiled, faintly, and said calmly, "I know I'm having a great time.  Passenger side-seat, leg room, room to stretch my arms--" she demonstrated, still with a straight, innocent expression "--and my head is cushioned."

        Their driver gave the youngest in the trio an amused look; obscured as she was by the thin metal wall, Hellboy figured Sand was encouraging Liz's dry humor, if only by seeing the answering twinge of amusement in the pale girl's face.  He reasoned this was one of those inexplicable moments of silent female communication, and felt vaguely outnumbered.

        He propped the other foot beside its partner on the crate, curled his tail casually against the seat as he dug a lighter from his pocket for the cigar clenched between his teeth.  "So?" he asked, and exhaled smoke.

        Liz raised her eyebrow and said nothing in return, having decided she had already made her point.

        It was, Hellboy thought, going to be a long trip.

--


	3. Chapter Two

The Mouth on Charming Hill:

Chapter Two

--

_Southern Virginia___

_Twenty miles outside Hallisburg.___

        "Twelve," said Sand from the driver's seat.  She turned, checking the road outside her window for signs of any other vehicles, and twisted the steering wheel quickly to bring the truck over.

        Liz flipped a page in the book of maps she held, studying the irregular lines of back-roads and tilting her head toward Sand.  "It's a few more miles off than that," she replied absently.  Turning the map around, she traced one of the roads with her finger and frowned.  "Dead end there, too," she sighed.

        Sand looked briefly to the younger girl.  "Not miles, hon," she corrected; Liz frowned privately at the casual nickname.  "Deaths."  In what had rapidly proven to be a normal expression for Agent Sand, the woman grinned as she spoke.

        "Well, that's not too morbid," Liz said dryly; "is it?"

        If anything, Sand's grin widened and took on a purposefully cheeky gleam as she checked the side-door mirrors habitually.  "Someone has to say it," she said loftily, and grinned again.

        "Great," came Hellboy's deeper voice, deadpanning as he shifted his oversized frame in the back.  A flesh of red showed from beneath his overcoat, and he relaxed as much as he could, still visible through the open window partition.  "But you're killing me with all this witty conversation.  Do me a favor and cut the crap, Sand."  It was that particular means of being brusque without being overly rude that Hellboy had – as, too, was the muffled curse he swore at a sudden jolt.

        "Sorry," Sand winced, eyes flicking momentarily to the rearview mirror.  "Bad roads."

        Liz caught his eyes, gave a sympathetic shrug of her shoulders as if to say 'tough luck' or any number of other unhelpful empathies.  "Maybe a plane would've been a better idea," she said with a slight smile.  "Or a truck you'd actually fit in, H.B."

        "No good," said Sand with a bright, almost sarcastic smile.  "The nearest airstrip's really not near enough to Hallisburg to justify the expense.  'Sides, Manning's been putting pressure on the budget again.  Cheaper and less hassle just to paint a truck and toss us in."

        Hellboy snorted, expressing his opinion on the matter of Manning and agency funding, and shifted to resettle his admirable weight, carefully to keep from tilting the truck.

        Still fiddling with the map book, turning it about in a wasted attempt to make sense of the entwined lines, Liz pressed a hand absently through her dark hair, rested her fingertips against her scalp.  "It's on the map, at least," she finally said, cutting into the temporary quiet.  She finished running a hand through her hair, and leaned her head forward as she followed one of the roads with her fingertips.

        The maps themselves – in an ordinary, gaudily-colored collection of the fifty states and their contents – had been decorated, heavily, with small, penciled asterisks and color-coded circles around wherever the BPRD had found, and responded to, paranormal activity.  Most of the colored circles dotting the Virginia maps, much like the rest of the New England states, were bright green, indicating standard low-level creepers: ghosts, mostly, would be green, as would relatively isolated or small-order demons and beasts.  Blue was next most common – small gathering of various unpleasant, but generally easy to contain, creatures, particularly nasty 'pest' swarms – and a spattering of yellows and oranges followed, for heightening threat levels.  The telltale warning sign of red – reserved for the worst of cases – was thankfully not present.

        What _was_ present, Liz noticed (tipping her head slightly and narrowing her eyes), was a distinct, straggling border of orange circles looped distantly around Hallisburg: small, neighboring towns that unlike their current destination _had_ been visited by the BPRD in the past to handle a serious danger of some level.  The farthest was sixty miles from Hallisburg, the nearest ten.  Green and blue, circled around landmarks, gas stations, and random stretches of road, connected the oranges into a large and lopsided round shape.

        "Poltergeists," she said clearly.  She touched a fingertip to one of the orange circles and dragged it to the next as she skimmed the accompanying abbreviations (plgt3-'86, plgt7-'50, plgt9-'82).  "All around Hallisburg – there's at least eight towns with past infestations.  Big ones, too, since 1950, and ghosts all over the map."  

        She paused, winced as she heard Hellboy make an amused noise, and folding the map book's spin into a more manageable bundle she leaned to hold it up to the middle of the cab.  Sand gave it a perfunctory glance, keeping her attention more on the road and the presence of other drivers; Hellboy, however, shifted again – with care – to better see the map.

        "We were here," Liz said, quietly.  "'96, in Amneston: two poltergeists…"

        "And the thing with the frog," finished Hellboy with a grimace.  "That was one hell of a mess, Liz."

        She nodded with a small grimace of her own, mouth tightening in reflexive memory.  "Thing is, Amneston is thirty-two miles north of Hallisburg, and it's not the only one that's had problems like that here.  They're circling Hallisburg; all the towns around it had a poltergeist problem of some sort, and there've been hostile ghosts everywhere between."  She waited a moment, and drew the map back to her lap, straightening in her seat.

        "Well, crap," he muttered, and there was a sort of metal boom when he resettled himself in the back.  "Anyone got any idea what the hell that means?"

        "Oversize target?" Sand suggested with a winsome tone.  "One giant Virginian bull's-eye, courtesy Hellsburg, yoo-es-ay."

        Hellboy snorted, again, and Liz caught his eye, smiling with amusement at him.  He looked away, then, to his boot as he propped it back on the crate he had been using as a footrest.  Still smiling to herself, she shifted back around just in time to see the faded green exit-sign: _Hallisburg --_.

        "Here we go," she murmured, tightening one hand around the armrest.

        "Cheer up," Sand said lightly to the other two.  "It can't be worse than that froggy friend of yours."

        Liz managed to not shudder.

-

_Hallisburg__, __VA___

_8:32 PM___

The town itself was so pointedly mundane that for a second or two Liz was struck with an almost paralyzing sense of sudden longing.  She thought, briefly, of what it must be like to live such a small, wonderfully average life, and then shook her head lightly, stepping out of the small bed-n-breakfast's back door.  Dusk had rapidly shadowed Hallisburg, giving a normal humid darkness to the thick trees out here, out back; the mosquitoes that had seemed numerous enough in the afternoon were all but swarming now in that same humidity, and she absently swatted a few of the braver ones away from her t-shirt-bared arms.  The literal bloodsuckers were a breed of horror all their own.

        Sasha Harper's Bed-n-Breakfast was suitably cozy, with just enough empty space for Liz and Sand to each claim a small and inexpensive room.  It was probably the best place they could have found to stay in town, close enough to the outskirts of Hallisburg that sneaking out to find Hellboy was as simple as the guise of an evening walk to stretch out tired legs – not that she was not going to use this opportunity to do such anyway.  

        An unwanted thought – how surprisingly pleasant it was to be in a place where nighttime strolls were not discouraged or considered dangerous, even after recent activities – crossed her mind and she shook her head again.  No, not so pleasant; they, after all, were here.

        Sighing, she slipped a hand into the left pocket of her slacks, pulled a small white carton from it as she walked the few steps across the low-slung porch.  Wood creaked and gave a little beneath her feet, a drawn-out moaning that was cut off when she stepped onto the gravel path.  Liz flipped the carton open and knocked a slender cigarette out with a quick jiggle of the carton, lifting and tucking it between her lips.  She did no light it – did not care to think on why she would not – and so flipped the carton shut, letting it drop back into her pocket.

        She followed the graveled trail for a few minutes in silence, slapping occasionally at the irritation of mosquitoes while she walked quietly along through the thin stretch of shadowing trees.  Breathing was humid and unnaturally thick, pressed down upon by the summer's evening heat, and even so she folded her arms across her chest, nearly shivering in spite of that heavy warmth. 

        Liz had never placed much trust in the idea of personal precognition, unless, of course, it was a skill particular to a person like Abe; the unlit cigarette she did not dare to light was subtle testimony to what she _could_ do, and would not.

        That's enough, she chided, tired, and stopped to wait silent and patient in the middle of the wide trail, beneath the twisting branches of old-and-new trees.  "We're far enough out, H.B.  It's all right if you come out, now."  She tightened her fingers in the thin cloth of her shirt, tipping her face up to the pale half-shape of the moon.  Waiting, still, in the silver-washed darkness of early night, she knew he was near; he always was, and if she was patient enough to continue waiting he would show.  He always does, she thought with a small, oddly sad sort of smile.

        It was a little longer – two minutes, maybe three – until she heard the heavy crunching of gravel under a particularly large person, and smiling to herself, muttered, "Right on cue."

        "This place is one of the deadest towns I've seen in a couple of years," he said by way of greeting, looming red in his overcoat.  "Been listening in on what passes for law enforcement here's yakkin' about, and I'll be damned if this town isn't clammed up enough to make Atlantic seem talky."  

        He continued walking, broad shoulders snapping off what few twigs and branches hung over the path as he passed, weight bearing down on the gravel, hard, when he stepped.  A faint trace of smoke puffed from the cigar he sported out of habit.

        "Atlantic?" Liz asked, fairly certain already.  She fell into place beside him, a slender figure to the left of his bulkier shape, her own rasping footsteps light compared to and overwhelmed by his.  Touching a hand to her mouth, she drew the cigarette away, clasped between two fingers.

        Hellboy grinned around the cigar, entirely amused with the nickname.  "Abe," he replied, still grinning.  "Thought it was better than Triton, but he's not crazy about either one."  He ducked under a relatively low-lying branch, one that cleared Liz's dark head by several inches.  "Guy just can't take a joke."

        Liz chose not to answer, though God knew it wouldn't have been hard; and instead she opted for a more business-oriented conversation piece.  "Earlier, when Sand said that bit about twelve deaths?  Turns out exactly twelve people have died in Hallisburg every year since 1950 – same year the first poltergeist infestation was reported, in Three Woods, some town west of here."

        "Lemme guess," he muttered, nudging a log half-sprawled on the trail with his boot, back into the undergrowth.  "It's not just some crazy coincidence, is it?"

        She shook her head, black hair gleaming in the moonlight.  "The details aren't clear, though – we can't just ask about it, not without drawing more attention to ourselves than we'd want.  We did learn there was at least one fatality in that freak storm a few weeks ago; some guy from out of town visiting family."  Liz reached out, clutching the left sleeve of his coat momentarily for balance as she stepped over a fallen and gnarled branch.

        He glanced at her hand, pale in the moonlight and even paler against the washed brown of his coat, and cleared his throat, fixing his gaze on the trail ahead.  She let go of the coat, turning to look hesitantly at the distant glow of the bed-n-breakfast.  Now she did shiver, a single involuntary spasm that she tamped down on easily.

        "Damn," she said, softly, and he heard.

        "Liz," he said as gently as he knew how, "something wrong?"

        He knew, of course, and if not he could guess, easily; even now, as strangely cold as she felt looking back at peaceful, unnatural Hallisburg, she also felt a mix of relief and unease at that familiarity they shared.

        Damn, she thought, but did not share again.

        "No," she answered without smiling.  She ducked her head and took a few quick steps forward, from a shadow into sudden, brilliant half-light.  Reflexively, agitated, she reached a hand up to the old crucifix at her throat.  As she closed her fingers around the smooth, cool metal, she did not hear the soft creaking of a tree near the trail.

        She did, however, hear Hellboy's near-cursing shout of her name, and looked up in time to see a large tree's rough side bulging grotesquely towards her.  She had one moment of thought – what the _hell--_? – before it ripped apart before her.

        Hellboy was behind Liz in a matter of seconds, hauling her to his chest and lifting his clenched, stone right hand to guard her head from the splintered and jagged wood twisting, whirling at them.  The wood did not touch them, instead veering away in suicidal arcs to lodge deeply into the gravel and surrounding trees.  A sudden wind had struck up, howling at the intruders with a nonliving fury as it tore at his solid, unmoving bulk.  As quickly as it had sprung up, the wind vanished, dwindling swiftly into humid silence.

        For a moment they did not move, his fist still held protectively behind her head, her fingers wound tightly enough around the crucifix to turn her knuckles white.  He relaxed, slightly, and Liz drew away, both turning to look at the ragged splinters left of the tree, buried like uneven javelins everywhere but for a three foot radius from where they had stood.  

        She looked, next, to her other hand, the cigarette still clasped in her hand, if noticeably crumpled.

        "Jeez," Hellboy said, glancing at the damage.  "Something's pissed off."

        She took a breath, calming burning nerves and still looking to the cigarette.  "I need a light," she said, then, and slipped the cigarette between her lips.

--


	4. Chapter Three

The Mouth on Charming Hill:

Chapter Three

--

_Hallisburg__, __VA___

_5:31 AM___

        Few things had ever been proven to really, truly startle Agent Tiffany Sand; by nature she was emotionally solid, difficult to surprise, and what Hellboy had, with some annoyance, dubbed "a cocky smartass," which was, in a way, something of a compliment coming from him.  He had his share of cocky and smartass moments as well, though he tended to be more serious about rather dangerous matters – comes with old age, he thought with a snort – than was Sand.

        She was not terribly impressed by the jagged sticks of wood driven into the general landscape, lit haphazardly by a five-thirty-two dawn.  "What exactly were you guys talkin' about to make the poor tree explode?" she asked flippantly, nudging a slender piece and watching as it shifted in the gravel.  "Or are my ears too tender?"

        "I'll tell you when you're older," Hellboy replied pleasantly.  The small, intimidating smile and the casual tap of a red finger on the cigar stub he held served to complete the warning message.  "Deal?"  His tail lashed, once, all but hidden in the underbrush he stood near as a precaution.

        Sand managed to not make a childish face, and settled for a generally lofty expression as she stepped carefully around a splintered branch sprawled across the gravel.  Rocks twisted and rasped lightly underfoot, giving just enough under her weight that she held herself with a certain careful wariness.  "Well, jeez," she said, leaning to peer at the relatively hollow stump left, poking once at the jagged lip.  "The damn thing really did explode, huh?  Bet that was a mood-killer."

        Liz turned to grant the other woman a particularly withering look, pausing her self-appointed chore of studying the photocopy of a hand-drawn, and local, map provided by the same Sasha Harper of the bed-n-breakfast.  "Yes," she replied dryly, "the tree really did explode.  Nearly killed me while it was at it."  She touched a hand absently to her mouth, and briefly started, having forgotten her earlier discarding of the cigarette.  

        She ran the hand quickly through her black hair, strands lightly tangled after the fruitless search of the evening before.  Hellboy looked away, stepping from the undergrowth to join Sand by the stump.

        "Look," Sand pointed, tapping a finger against an odd wet swell within the stump.  "Started to suck the roots up out of the ground _through_ the nicely gutted tree.  You've got to admit, that's kind of unique.  Stupid, maybe, but unique."  It was almost a grudging admiration the way she said it, apparently fascinated with the awkward lump in the shell left of the tree.

        "Try annoyed as hell," Hellboy corrected offhand, exhaling a small, obscuring puff of acrid smoke as he picked the cigar from his mouth.  "It stuck around long enough to basically flip us off before running."  He paused, breathing out another small cloud of cigar smoke.  "Coward."  

        A characteristically blunt, and randomly apt, statement; Liz smiled in spite of the quiet seriousness of the dawning morning, shook her head gently with a slight amusement.

        "Whatever it was," added Sand in a perfunctory fashion.  She allowed herself one final poke, prodding the swollen, exposed inside of the twisted root, and wiped her hand over her dark slacks.

        "I'd like to say it was a poltergeist," Liz responded, heels scrapping over the gravel as she came to stand to Hellboy's left, his larger red frame towering over hers.  "That is, with all the problems everywhere else, it wouldn't be too shocking."  She glanced at the map in her hand as if to verify her statement, merely blinked as she registered it was in fact the Hallisburg map and not the set of Virginia maps locked in the black-painted milk-truck.  With a soft sigh, she pinched the bridge of her nose, passed a hand over the worn tenseness of her face drawn tight with sleeplessness.

        "Doesn't seem to fit, though," Hellboy said, idly twisting the cigar between his fingers.  "Needs a source – some teen thinks her parents're out to get her, kid with repressed emotions; you name it.  We don't have a name 'til we've got a source."  Studying the cigar frankly, he fit it back to his mouth.

        Liz made a murmuring noise in agreement.  "Right," she said.  "Don't jump to conclusions."  An elegant black eyebrow twitched up sardonically as she looked to her taller, brightly colored companion.  "Hellboy's motto.  Isn't that right, H.B.?" she teased, lightly.

        To his credit, he maintained his solid, coolly professional expression, taking a slow – and pointedly thoughtful – drag on the cigar.  "Yeah," he replied.  "That sounds about right.  You know me to the letter, Liz."  He grinned widely, sarcastic, before she smiled – little more than a dry twitch of her mouth – and motioned to him.  "What?" Hellboy asked, glinting red in the sunlight.

        "I need your right arm," she answered, unfolding the small, if unwieldy, photocopied map.  "A breeze is picking up and I don't really want to try flattening it against a tree."

        Needlessly adjusting the shortened sleeve on his right arm, Hellboy offered the giant stone forearm, trying momentarily to peer at the map as Liz carefully began smoothing it across the patterned rock.  She leaned forward, hiding the lines and symbols as her dark hair tumbled forward over her shoulder, and Hellboy turned his head away, focusing intently on a large slab of shattered wood needled into another tree.

        Sand cleared her throat, in as amused a way as possible.  Damn it, he thought, straightening his back and fighting to not turn around and glower at her; she was beginning to get really annoying.

        "They won't bite," he said casually, instead, to Liz.  She started, glancing up and giving him that mixed look of exasperation and mild amusement she had.  "The trees," he explained just as casually.

        He was rewarded with a flickering smile and Liz slowly tracing the trail's winding direction.  "Here," she said, looking to him and then Sand, motioning for the woman to come closer with a quick flip of her hand.  "There's an abandoned house on Charming Hill; this trail cuts through the back-yard – for lack of a better word, at least."

        "Always an abandoned house," Hellboy muttered around the cigar.  "_Always_ a hill.  Jeez."

        Liz gave him a sharp look, and returned to the map with a soft sigh, moving her attention from the trail to the hedging lines of the streets in town.  "While _you_ visit the house on Charming Hill, H.B., Sand and I'll be checking out a bookstore – where the little girl vanished from."  She pinpointed the small square of A CHARMING READ at the base of Charming Hill, leaned back to let Sand see it.

        "Alrighty," Sand grinned.  "But you mind if we eat first, hon?  I'm starving."

        Liz stepped away from Hellboy, re-folding the map as she looked upwards, to the early morning sky.  "That'll be fine."  She turned back to the bed-n-breakfast, nearly obscured by the trees, and stepped around a jagged piece of wood lodged in the ground at her feet.

-

_Charming Manor_

_Hallisburg__, __VA___

        The actual 'yard' area behind the decrepit blue manor on Charming Hill was as unpleasantly filthy and overrun with decay as the house itself; dark blue paint had been bleached with years of sunlight, chipped and peeling like faded navy snow to sprinkle over weeds and wildly placed flowers – roses, marigolds, tulips, all equally faded like the paint, and uniformly sickly-sweet in their aroma.  It was a quiet, motionless decadence, dead or dying in spite off the muddy sponginess of the earth, sliding in oozing wrinkles beneath his boots.

        Walking to the manor had been relatively uneventful; but for one false scare with a particularly inquisitive – or confused – doe, Hellboy had seen nothing moving along the trail after waving the girls off.  The house seemed as uninhabited and _dead_ as the trail, and as he dropped the withered cigar stub, grinding it into the mud with a heavy heel, no deer – curious or lost – presented themselves to break this silence.  Fitting, he thought.  What would a haunted house be if anyone really lived in or around it?

        Stepping onto the sagging, damp porch carefully and wincing, barely, at the dangerous groaning of the rotten wood, he still moved to knock on the dark, flaking door.  He partly expected the door to swing open, bleak and inviting, of its own volition, but was not disappointed when it did not.  Nor, when he tried to jiggle the grimy doorknob, did the door prove unlocked.  

        He shrugged, leaned back, taking care that his weight did not punch through the weakened porch, and slammed his right fist through the soft wood, drawing back again as the door splintered and whined.  The hinges – rusted with age and rain – groaned and gave, sending the door twisting back into the musty interior of the manor.

        He placed his left hand on the door frame, gingerly eased himself into the firmly lit, sickeningly sweet-smelling ruins of an old kitchen.  Yellowed tablecloths lay torn on an older style stove, one remembered faintly from what had passed as his childhood – shining white in places, but mostly tarnished and blackened with dust and soot and flaked paint.  

        Hellboy straightened his neck, having stooped to fit through the now empty, though dusty, doorway.  Broken plates, stains from old foods and drinks, cobwebs, and that disgustingly pervasive smell of the flowers – the kitchen was unwelcome, seeming removed from the cheerful dawn lighting the Virginia sky outside.

        Glass and porcelain cracked, or shattered, as he stepped forward, eyes adjusted now to the yellowed dark.  The ceiling was hung low; or, rather, low enough to nearly scrape the shaven knobs lefts of his horns, and the wood – once polished – floorboards soft, small and somewhat dry creaking sound accompanying each step.  He waved his hand before his face twice, attempting to brush away the unpleasantly sweet scent, and casually reached for the polished handle of the Samaritan where it was slung at his hip.  If, in fact, the focal point for Hallisburg's years of mild oddness was a poltergeist, or group of poltergeists, he doubted it would do any good to actually use the Samaritan, but if was something more tangible, at least he would have it in hand.

        First, though, he figured he'd break its nose after the frenetic suddenness of last night.

        "Hey," Hellboy all but drawled, hunching to slip through the kitchen doorway, elbowing a broken and loose door out of his path.  "Spooky: you in here?  It's not nice to keep a guest waiting."  He drew the Samaritan, holding it in a loose and almost congenial – were it not for the gun's size and nature – manner.

        This room, a long and presumably once-elegant banquet hall, was darker than the kitchen, a blackened sort of mahogany leeched out by dust from rotted paneling and wet, unraveled cloth that may have been tapestries, or drapes.  No windows existed to dispel the faded darkness, the only light being the peek of angled sunlight from further in the house, and the sickly yellow shades of the kitchen.  

        He glanced, briefly, at the deep red of the elongated table cracked and crumbling from age and the persistent decay, muttered an unimpressed, "Right," under his breath.

        Taking another ginger step into the banquet hall, he coolly checked the state of the Samaritan's ammunition, not entirely feigning his un-spirited disinterest in the decant atmosphere of Charming Manor.  "Look," he said, pacifying.  "I'll allow that the bit with the tree was unexpected.  I'm not going to lie and say I get exploding trees every day on the job; it was a little creative on your part.  But this?"  He motioned with his left hand, encompassing the shady length of the banquet hall with the down-turned barrel of the Samaritan.  "Who the hell're you trying to impress, Spooky?  A bunch of dumb-ass teenagers out for a midnight horror run and some underage drinking?"

        A slight wind billowed lightly through the banquet hall, stirring gently at the lapels of his overcoat and twisting the crumbling felt and cloth of the tapestries, or draperies, along the walls.  He waited, patiently and stoically, with the Samaritan heavy against his shoulder; Hellboy remained as endlessly unimpressed by the soft, showy breeze as he had been by the equally showy decaying atmosphere of the manor itself – so much of it as he had seen so far.  He could think of no reason, at that, to believe anything else in this dark manor would be any more inspired, much less inspiring.

        "Yeah," he said.  "That's what I thought."

        The wind suddenly magnified, pounding at his back with a horrible fury.  Decidedly against his will the current ripped the Samaritan from his shoulder and hand, managing to propel the heavy weapon literally _into_ the opposite wall.  

        "Aw, _crap_," he had time to ground out, before planting his large feet – booted hooves, rather – firmly on the floorboards.  As the wind quickly eased into the normal, stock-creepy stillness, the molded wood underfoot moaned and snapped, jolting him as he dropped two inches.  He looked to his feet, glanced aside in annoyance, and began picking himself out of the floor with the intent of reclaiming the Samaritan.

        "Hello," a small voice said, interrupting him.  "I don't think you're supposed to be here."

        Hellboy looked up, sharply, to see a slender girl – eight years, at the oldest – with stringy red hair and a curiously flat sort of expression.  "What're _you_ doing here?" he asked in response.

        The girl did not flinch, just as she had not when she first spoke though it was the general reaction people seemed to have after seeing him.

        "I am," she answered detachedly.  She gave a miniscule, bland shrug, more a routine reflex than an actual reaction.  "That's all to say."

        He grunted, resettling his weight carefully on the floor away from the twin holes.  "Great," he said, rotating his right shoulder absently.  "You have a name, at least?"

        The girl looked to him, blank and emotionless as she seemed to consider the question.  "My name was Jeannie," she replied, distant.  "And then I died."

        The floor moaned again, and burst, caving in and then sending spokes of dead wood into the air like rotted needles.

-

_A Charming Read_

_Hallisburg__, __VA___

        A CHARMING READ was anything but: though the glass from the shattered window display had been swept from the sidewalk, jagged shards remained in the actual casing.  A rich and nasty smell – like rotting weeds, or flowers – stuck in the air directly around it, and when Liz stepped through the empty, door-less doorway into the store, it was into a comparatively dark and frenetically disorganized one.  What light-bulbs were in place in the ceiling fixtures were broken, pointed and ragged; books and papers were strewn across a glass-covered, carpeted floor, crunching and rustling as Sand followed.

        "Huh," Sand whistled.  "Damn."

        Liz crouched to the floor, sifting a hand gently through uneven glass and unmarked, torn papers to pick a dented book up by the creased corner.  "_Streets of Laredo_," she read, and just as gently set it back down amidst the glass and scattered paper.  "Sounds like something Abe might read."  Propping her hands on her knees, she straightened on her feet, shifting with a string of brittle crunches through the mess.  

        For no discernable reason, she touched her hip briefly, feeling the metal weight of her gun beneath the black cloth of the loose-fitted jacket she wore.  Heavy, foreign, comfortable normal – a weapon she did not have to fear.  She clenched her hand into a fist.

        "Humid," she heard Sand mutter, "and hot, and would you look at that: not only do they actually have tourist books, they're charging six-fifty for 'em.  Hallisburg," she murmured, lifting the booklet to what dim light gleamed in the store, "you're just not that interesting."

        Liz smiled, humorlessly, and turned to the empty display case as a uniformed man stepped across the room from the back.

        "I'm going to have to ask you two to leave," he announced by way of greeting, drawing Sand's attention from the booklet and Liz's from the occasional glitter of glass shards in the window casing.  "I don't know why you're in here, exactly – store's not open to customers anymore – but you'll have to get out.  Plenty of other places in town for tourists like yourselves."  An unseen sneer twisted the officer's words, and Liz stiffened her back, black hair falling straight around her pale face.

        "Thank you," she responded, flatly.  He nodded, brusque, touched the brim of his hat with two fingers in a curt salute of sorts, and vanished into the storage area once more.  Shifting to face Sand, she suggested lowly, "We might as well check on H.B. now."

        "Sounds great," Sand agreed, slipping the booklet into her pocket and looking innocent under Liz's sharp gaze.  "What?  I left a twenty on the counter."

        Liz said nothing, and picking her way through the frantic chaos of the floor, stepped into the sunlight.

--


	5. Chapter Four

The Mouth on Charming Hill:

Chapter Four

--

_Charming Manor_

_Hallisburg__, __VA.___

        "Okay," Hellboy muttered, propping himself up with his right hand and plucking a large, bent splinter from his pant leg.  "Evil undead eight-year old.  Got to remember that."  Settling his weight on that propped hand, he shifted, sending a shower of dust from wood and mold out; he levered carefully up from the dampened dirt now bared by the gutted floorboards.  Except for the few toothpicks of wood that had lodged in the edges of his coat, easily brushed aside when he stood gingerly, the actual tearing up of the floor had done little damage to him.  The banquet hall itself was a different matter.  The long, soft table had splintered and torn apart with diseased simplicity, legs snapped and jutting fiercely out from the dining table tossed against the far wall, crumpled in half.

        Brushing down the worn, dusted folds of his coat with his flesh hand, he swung the other lightly through the stale air, trying to sweep away the disturbed dust from his face.  With the lack of any decent lighting and the thick layer of irritating dust obscuring what little light there was, walking over fallen mounds of cloth and an uneven earthen foundation would be difficult.  Probably stupid, too, he snorted, and did so anyway.

        Still sweeping his right hand slowly through the air, he stepped forward, boot landing firmly on a splintered floorboard and easily crumbling the weak wood.  He paused, sliding it aside with the side of his foot, and moved to step again only to stop and exhale with an annoyed restraint.

        "Y'know," he muttered conversationally, digging his left hand into a coat pocket, "what the hell'm I doing?"  From the various wards and small religious tokens he drew out a small flashlight, flipping it over in his palm and casually flicking it on.  The dust obscured the thin beam, blurring slightly though it was nonetheless much clearer; at least now he could see the frequent scattering of aged wood snapped from the floorboards and old rock pulled up from the spongy earth, before stepping on it.

        Absently swiping at the dust a last time with his right hand, as the dry cloud began to resettle, he twitched the flashlight to the side, trying to pick out the gleam of metal beneath dirt, or wood.  "Damn," Hellboy grumbled, annoyed with Charming Manor.  "What do you say you give me back my gun, huh?" 

        On a whim, he glanced up, flicking the flashlight's slender, battery-operated light up as well; a bizarre, coiled pattern of a serpent wrapped, mouth gaping, around an exaggeratedly large fly was painted on the sagging wooden ceiling, chipped and faded paint pierced by the occasional floorboard.

        "Nice," he said, dryly, and swept the flashlight back down to continue searching the frenetic mess.  Kicking aside several sharply angled slats, soft splinters jabbing out from each broken angle, he did the same to a half-ripped tapestry haphazardly strewn across the dirt.  "This place isn't going to last, Spooky: didn't you read the story?  One man builds a house on sand," he flicked the flashlight to scan the clutter along the wall before him, and was rewarded with a faint metal glint.  "And another man, he's a smart guy – he builds on a rock foundation."

        Hellboy stooped, crouching, to pick up the Samaritan, half buried under a ragged tapestry made a pincushion with splinters and a broken floorboard or two jabbed deep into it.  "So what've you got, Spooky?" he asked absently, lifting the Samaritan with his left hand and turning it to check for dents or stains.  "A big hill of dirt?  That's not much better than sand.  One more big storm with you sucking all the water up, and bye-bye Charming Manor."

        Somewhere in the chaotically devastated banquet hall came the distinct (and quickly becoming familiar) sound of wood snapping suddenly in two.  His eyes flickered up from glancing over the Samaritan to stare briefly at the wall beside him.  He waited, still crouched casually in the light wreckage as the gun gleamed, the flashlight's beam catching it from where he carefully held the slender cylinder with his stone hand.

        "Spooky," he said patiently, "you've _got_ to learn how to take criticism."  Smoothly tucking the Samaritan into its worn leather holster with all the suave grace of a Western vigilante, he stood, drawing himself up with a meaningfully bored shrug of his coat.  He glanced to the fading mural overhead and gave one mock-pitying shake of his head before turning to face the banquet hall as a whole.

        He held his hands out in a sarcastic pantomime of congeniality, held to the side as the flashlight cast its beam through the remaining hazy dust.  "That okay with you?"

        The small and unpleasant wind murmured around his boots, sifting through rubble and flapping the edges of shredded cloth draped in asymmetrical discord in the dark expanse of wood and broken chairs.  It still stank of a heavy, sweet rot, stronger than before as the wind wafted it through, from mold, velvet, and aged, weakened wood – flowers, too, somewhere in the corners or outside the hall, putrid and hidden.

        "Hey, Spooky," Hellboy drawled, twitching the flashlight so it flickered along the far, blackened wall, diffracted by the hazy lack of lighting.  "Is this the best you can do?  Throwin' a little tantrum?"  He made a brief, amused noise in the back of his throat, half-smirking in a condescending manner as he glanced, unimpressed, across the room.

        "Go _away_," came the child's voice, abruptly sharp and hateful as it rang through the shadows and dust.  "This is not your place.  Go away!"

        The table, tossed some distance away, groaned and with a shuddering cracking collapsed entirely in an awkward mess of wood and dirt.  Dust roiled up from it, curling around what remained of the torn and crumpled chairs.  The light from the small flashlight glinted, piercingly, through the momentarily disturbed cloud of dust.

        "Yeah," he said.  "Whatever." 

        Walking with as uncaring an air of indifference as was possible, he bent his head forward to carefully fit through one of the empty doorways into an even larger room.  The ceiling vaulted, sharply, allowing him to straighten his neck as he lifted his boots to step gently on the floorboards.  The wood settled with only a few puffs of old dust leaving the thin space between slats; this room with two once-elegant staircases leading up on the walls, to his left and to his right, was darker and far cleaner – though spiderwebs still clung stubbornly to the staircases.

        Through the dark of the wide room he could see an arching doorway several feet in front of him, behind which – he turned the tiny flashlight to illuminate the carved wood – was what he thought was the front door.  There were other doorways, of course, in the room, one (servants' quarters?) at the base of each staircase, but only the entranceway had some remaining semblance of worn and delicate décor.

        "Really letting this place go, Spooky," Hellboy noted, and he took a few cautious, creaking steps forward.  With the odd cleanliness of this particular room, the floor and walls gleaming distantly and the air _not_ dusty, the flashlight was brighter, shining with a stricter clarity.

        Movement, then, outside the narrow illumination of the flashlight, a dark shift in the shadows balanced at the foot of the staircase to his right.  He twisted the flashlight over in reaction, an attempt to catch the movement, and was rewarded with the brief glimpse of something darting beyond the edge of the door by the last step; one trace of black pulling into the room behind that door, leaving it gaping slightly, a narrow strip only shaded more by his flashlight's direction.  He began moving to the door, pausing to study the tube still pinched gingerly between rocky fingers and then looking to his empty left hand, flesh fingers idly flexing.  With something of a lopsided shrug, he drew the Samaritan out a second time, balancing it with practiced ease in his palm.

        The faint harsh sound of static burst from the small channel-radio at his belt as he went to follow the unknown thing, and he stopped, again, with an irritated expression.  He re-holstered the Samaritan, feeling a sense of annoyed timing, and depressed the comm.-button on top of the small square with his thumb.  "Sand," he acknowledged, loudly enough so his voice would carry through, as would the unspoken threat.  "What the hell do you want?"

        "Hey, hey, now, big fella," Sand replied in good-natured defense, her voice tinny.  "You're only going to push everyone away, you know.  Alienate yourself.  Wind up a lonely old man surrounded by an exponentially growing number of cats."

        Hellboy kept his thumb in place, looking appraisingly at the front door.  "Hey, Sand," he said, sharply.  "Leave my cats alone.  And who are you calling an old man, anyway?"  He turned the flashlight up, glanced critically at the undecorated and gloomy ceiling and the railings where the second floor grew back from the stairs.

        "Yeah, well, witty comeback inserted here," Sand muttered, her voice drawn thin by static and obstructions.  "Anyway: Liz and I got kicked out of the bookstore.  Local police force might be tight-lipped as all get-out, but at least they're efficient.  You know – or something."  She coughed, once, either naturally or from some bored anxiety.

        Probably just bored, he thought dryly, and keeping his eyes and the flashlight's clear beam on the side door, asked, "So where'd you run off to now, Sand?  Try not to piss off any of the locals."  He glanced back to the decadent banquet hall, and added, "Living or undead."

        Sand took a moment to respond, as though she were listening to another speaking on her end, before making an amused snorting sound.  "Liz says we'll leave the pissing off of locals, be they living or be they dead – sorry, _un_dead – to you.  Don't kill the messenger, now!" 

        She was, he thought with a trace of his own unpleasant humor, too damn gleeful about it – as, he was sure, was Liz. 

        "But to answer your question," Sand continued, that tinny voice barely carrying through the air, "we're kind of right outside the front of Charming Manor.  Trust me; we'd love to barge in and kick some intangible ass right alongside you, but there's a really, really big tree laying here instead of, y'know, half the front veranda.  It sort of fell across the door some time last night, near as I can figure.  Can't move it!" she ended, bizarrely cheery.

        Hellboy turned to face the front door again, as if to judge the strength of the wood both of and around it.  At the edge of his vision he caught another vague and shadowy movement, this one also darting swiftly beyond that side door, sliding through the gap left open.  "Damn," he muttered.  Louder, he spoke to Sand, "Is Liz next to you?"  Waiting, he returned his attention to that side door, carefully watching it for more movement.

        "Where else would she be?" Sand answered rhetorically, quickly – before, in an entirely too 'knowing' tone, she added, slyly, "Oh-ho-_ho_.  Yeah, she's here.  I'll get off the line."  She paused, and finished, unable to resist, "Nudge-nudge."

        "Sand," said Hellboy.  "Shut up."

        The static resumed temporarily, rasping and easily louder than their voices were on the line; it was distracting and too loud of a noise, actually, one that would probably drawn even more attention to them than he already had by himself.  Perfect, he thought.

        "H.B.?" asked Liz, her voice, too, thinned by the line as the static vanished; still, this particular reedy voice was unmistakably Liz's.  "You wanted to talk with me?"  She sounded faintly, but no less distinctly, humored, and he felt a wry sort of smile pulling at his own mouth with the thought.

        "Yeah," he answered, wanting to clear his throat but not taking the time to do it.  "Look, I'm worried about you, sorta – you doing okay after the thing with the tree?" 

        It was as unclear and fumbling a question as he could have hoped.

        She was obviously amused when she responded, a wistfully sarcastic humor in her voice – he could nearly see her smiling.  "You're worrying about me?  I think you've got it mixed around a little: aren't you the one who takes all the hits here?  Besides, it's not like it really matters anyway – I'm fine." 

        A brief and faint murmur ensued, as – he assumed – she turned to speak to or with Agent Sand, and with something of an obscured, parting affirmation, Liz shifted back to the radio-line.  "H.B.," she said, almost able to hide the tired tone in her voice, "this tree's not going to be moving any time soon – it's taken half the veranda and the veranda's roof with it.  I'm surprised we've gotten as close to the door as we have with all the broken wood around it.  Never mind the actual tree."  Her voice thinned again, wavering and fading.

        Hellboy, too, was silent for a moment, feeling as though he should offer some form of gruff encouragement and knowing if he hadn't already lost whatever those things had been, he sure as hell was going to if he didn't wind up this conversation.  _Damn_, he thought, with no small irritation at life and the world in general.

        "Liz, you and Sand head 'round the house," he said, instead, moving toward the side door as the flashlight bobbed and gleamed.  "Back door's open; cut through the kitchen and the dining room."  He paused, eyeing and mentally judging the stability of the staircase near the side door, doubting it would hold his weight, but thinking it could probably support the two women.  "Stay quiet," he added with a lazy glance to the banquet hall," and get to the foyer or whatever it is.  Check the second floor."

        Liz, as always, followed his words quickly, committing instructions easily to memory in preparation.  "Where'll you be?" she asked, impersonal and expectant.

        "Checking out a side room," he said in clarification, absently casting the flashlight's beam up the stairs.  "Thought I saw something move.  Safer for me to follow after it than letting you and Sand."  He looked to the door now only a foot away, ducking his head in consideration as she spoke again in reply.

        ""We'll turn on locators if we come across anything dangerous," Liz sighed, the noise small and dwarfed by the room.  "One of us will radio in if it's an emergency."

        "Same here," he said, and grinned humorlessly for a moment.  "Don't know what it'd take to get me in a bind, kid."

        She laughed, brief and faded into a reedy ghost of a noise, and with a wry familiarity said, "Don't get cocky – it'll only make it more embarrassing."  The smile, or the tone of one, was still in her voice, and it vanished smoothly into a last remark: "Radio silence until someone's in danger, then?"

        "Radio silence," he agreed, and lightened the press of his thumb on the comm.-button.  "Stay safe, Liz."

        "Same to you, H.B.," she said, and an abrupt burst of static took the place of her voice, disrupting the air for several seconds until he lifted his thumb entirely.  Reaching for and drawing the Samaritan from the stamped holster, he hoisted it effortlessly to his broad shoulder and gently knocked the side door open.

-

        Liz stepped through the doorway into yellowed light, hazed by a layer of dust and made musty as it drifted aimlessly in the kitchen.  She waved her hand absently before her face in a reflexive attempt to brush away the thick, rotted stink of some shriveled and dead plant life.  "H.B.," she said with a faint smile, looking at a widely spaced path of dents in the wood, weak slats bent where his booted hooves had stepped.

        She turned to look for Sand, hearing the other agent poking curiously about in the backyard, and started slightly, half-turned, at seeing a small child with greasy red hair and a look of undefined fury.  "Oh," said Liz, instinctively moving for her gun and stopping, feeling foolish but still wary.  "Hello.  Do you live here?"

        The girl's face twisted into an ugly expression, and she bunched her soggy, dirtied skirt in her hands.  "_You_ do not belong here!" she screamed, and blue-white flame burst from Liz's fingertips, as uncontrollable as the sudden heat that exploded in her mind.

--


End file.
